Chorale by Candlelight

A Hot Chocolate Holiday

What means December holidays? Two things that come to mind are hot chocolate, and the UW Music Department's annual Gala Holiday Concerts. So UW has combined them into this year's concert theme: A Hot Chocolate Holiday.

Chocolate music? All the combined choirs will sing Hot Chocolate from The Polar Express. Bel Canto and Statesmen will combine in a jazz style to present Ella Fitzgerald's Hotta Chocolatta. Faculty soprano Maureen Boddicker will sing a Bach aria, Ah, how sweet chocolate tastes, more delicious than a thousand kisses. Finally, the voices and orchestra will present a new song, The Chocolate Carol.

Punch Williamson, Laramie's favorite Englishman, is the narrator this year, and will also perform his signature organ postlude. As always, groups from all parts of the music department are performing. The Bel Canto Women's Chorus and the Civic Chorus are conducted by Holly Dalrymple, the Singing Statesmen by Nicole Lamartine, the Symphony Orchestra by Michael Griffith, and the Wind Symphony by Robert Belser.

Other pieces on the concerts include Christmas Mambo, a light Cuban-style version of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (a bit of salsa in your chocolate), and Midnight Sleighride, a jazzy version of Prokofiev's Troika (what’s more perfect than some chocolate after a snowy ride?) A new tune by contemporary composer Steven Sametz called Noel is built on a repeating idea of music for each vocal section building to a rousing ending. And what holiday concert is complete without Leroy Anderson’s ever-popular Sleigh Ride? As always, the concert will end with the combined forces doing a carol medley. This year, Robert Shaw’s The Many Moods of Christmas fills that exciting role.